📢 "1993: The Year Canada Abandoned Its People"
By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita
Did you know that in 1993, the federal government of Canada made a decision that would change the course of millions of lives — and not for the better?
They cut all funding for new affordable housing.
Let that sink in.
Before 1993, Canada was building about 15,000 to 20,000 social housing units every year. Seniors, single parents, low-income families, people living with disabilities — all had a chance at living with dignity. A roof over your head wasn’t a luxury. It was a right.
Then, with the stroke of a pen, that stopped.
Under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Finance Minister Paul Martin, the federal government decided to download housing responsibility to the provinces. They pulled funding. They pulled support. They walked away.
The result? A slow-burning, preventable disaster.
🏚️ More than 235,000 people now experience homelessness every year in Canada.
💔 Thousands have died in tents, on sidewalks, in stairwells.
🧠 Mental health has deteriorated, addictions have worsened, trauma has deepened.
📦 Cities like Vancouver and Toronto have made headlines for throwing people's tents, walkers, IDs, and medications into garbage trucks.
What kind of country does this to its people?
We have seniors who built this country sleeping in shelters, or worse, outside in the cold. We have children growing up in hotels, cars, or unsafe motels, not knowing what home feels like.
It’s not just a "housing crisis."
It’s a national shame.
It’s a policy failure.
It’s a slow, silent war on the poor.
And let’s be brutally honest:
This was a choice.
A political, economic, ideological choice — rooted in austerity, neoliberalism, and corporate greed.
Meanwhile, billionaires get tax cuts. Developers get subsidies. Non-profit execs make six figures managing “poverty” as a business.
But the people who need help? They’re abandoned.
📜 Canada Signed the Right to Housing
Canada is a signatory to the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes the right to adequate housing.
So where is the accountability?
How is it legal to evict someone when there’s nowhere to go?
How is it acceptable to bulldoze encampments when shelters are full or unsafe?
How can we call ourselves a “developed nation” while our most vulnerable live and die in tents?
💥 Is this not a crime against humanity?
If you knowingly create conditions that result in:
- mass suffering
- displacement
- premature death
- destruction of dignity
…what else can we call it?
Where is the public inquiry?
Where is the justice?
📣 What needs to happen now:
- Reinstate federal funding for deeply affordable, non-market housing — co-ops, supportive housing, and public builds.
- Stop the criminalization of homelessness.
- Enforce the right to housing through real, binding legislation.
- Audit non-profit housing agencies — transparency and accountability are essential.
- Support community-led solutions, Indigenous housing, and Land Back initiatives.
- Treat this like the emergency it is. Because it is.
✨ What You Can Do:
✅ Share this post.
✅ Talk to your MLA, MP, and city council.
✅ Support grassroots groups — not just polished NGOs.
✅ Stand in solidarity with those fighting for housing justice.
✅ Demand housing that’s for people, not profit.
I am writing this not just as an advocate, artist, or citizen — but as someone who has witnessed and lived through the cruelty of a system designed to ignore suffering.
If you’ve ever walked by a tent city and felt heartbroken…
If you’ve ever worried about losing your own home…
If you’ve ever wondered how we got here — now you know.
It started in 1993.
But it doesn’t have to end in despair.
We can demand better. We must.
Because housing is not a privilege.
It’s a human right.
—
Tina Winterlik (Zipolita)
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#RightToHousing #Canada1993 #StopTheCuts #HousingIsAHumanRight #ZipolitaSpeaks #DigitalHorizonZ
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